TITLE: True Enough (3-1)

[1]
I went to mainline to put a stop to the cutting that precedes spraying pavements.
It was 0955. Bars shut tight blocking windows and doors.
How have I come to be this, in this place?
Stained. In this scabby, pee-ridden corner of Edinburgh’s public underbelly.
Wayward creatures weaving across sidewalks and tarmac.
Breaking beyond the lines that keep others on track.
I wretch, smelling booze wreaking on stale breaths that have me veer away.
I cannot bear to steer this path today.

[2]
HUES OF YELLOW, SILVER, BRONZE AND GOLD SMATTERED IN SWATHES ACROSS THE SPACE.
ENERGY FIELDS CRASHING AND COLLIDING, TRAPPED IN THIS BOUNDED CAGE.
FOREVER STAMPED IN TIME. CLAMPED SHUT.
BOXED FOR LIFE IN FORCED RECTANGULAR FORM.
HOW DID I COME TO BE SHAPED, IN LANDSCAPE?
THERE IS NO PORTRAIT OF ME THAT WILL EVER BE
TRUE ENOUGH.

[3]
I went to mainline to put a stop to the cutting that precedes spraying pavements.
HUES OF YELLOW, SILVER, BRONZE AND GOLD SMATTERED IN SWATHES ACROSS THE SPACE.
It was 0955. Bars shut tight blocking windows and doors.
ENERGY FIELDS CRASHING AND COLLIDING, TRAPPED IN THIS BOUNDED CAGE.
How have I come to be this, in this place?
FOREVER STAMPED IN TIME. CLAMPED SHUT.
Stained. In this scabby, pee-ridden corner of Edinburgh’s public underbelly.
BOXED FOR LIFE IN FORCED RECTANGULAR FORM.
Wayward creatures weaving across sidewalks and tarmac.
HOW DID I COME TO BE SHAPED, IN LANDSCAPE?
Breaking beyond the lines that keep others on track.
THERE IS NO PORTRAIT OF ME THAT WILL EVER BE
I wretch, smelling booze wreaking on stale breaths that have me veer away.
TRUE ENOUGH.
I cannot bear to steer this path today.

AUTHOR: LOUIE GARDINER (United Kingdom)

Louie is a creative catalyst using photography, poetry, clown and performative facilitation giving new expression to who she is, what she does and how she does it.

After a decade of dormancy, Louie has renewed her love of photography. She has also found herself flowing into writing poetry, making pictures, engaging in performative arts; and experimenting with how to bring all these together. She is finding fresh synergies in the ways her pictures bring expanded dimensionality to her poetic offerings.

The intimacy, rawness, sensitivity and evocative nature of her creativity is made possible because she taps into her own vulnerabilities as an emerging artist, alongside others. She recognises the necessity to open up to what is not yet known, to liberate what can only arise in the interplay between the private, personal and collective creative process.

Louie is the Founder of Presence in Action, an embodied pedagogy liberating authentic human potential - her own and that of those she has worked with prior to, during and beyond her doctoral research. Her PhD (Systems Science) is an alchemical manifestation arising through channeling creative and embodied knowing into the terrain of systems and complexity sciences: Attending, Responding, Becoming.

She is a regular contributor at Open Mic Poetry nights in Edinburgh and is working towards her first solo production. She is a Fellow, Hull University Business School & RSA and is on Faculty for the Integral Performance Making Programme, Thomas Prattki Centre, Berlin.